Go With God

Diagnosis. Breakup. Loss. Trauma. Chronic pain. Addiction. The things you didn't see coming, wouldn't have chosen, and can't seem to change no matter how hard you try. This episode is week two of the Unwanted Stories series, and instead of sitting in shame or looking for a way out, Kaley wants to reframe how we look at these pieces of our story altogether.

Jesus opens his most famous sermon with a list of people the world would never call blessed. The poor in spirit. Those who mourn. The persecuted. The falsely accused. It's not what blessing is supposed to look like, and it's definitely not how most of us feel in our own unwanted stories. But Kaley makes the case that Jesus wasn't describing a future reward, he was describing a present Kingdom.

Some of what's covered:

• What the Kingdom of Heaven actually means in Matthew, and why it's something Jesus followers are already part of, not just something we're waiting on.
• Why pain tempts us to give up on the "already" and only hope for the "not yet." It's normal to want God to just remove us from the hard thing instead of meeting us in it.
• What it means to "take up the yoke of the Kingdom," recognizing it, carrying it, and participating in it, starting with how we view our own suffering.
• How Philippians 3, 2 Corinthians 12, and Matthew 19 all point to the same upside down truth, that we gain by losing, we're strong in weakness, and the last will be first.
• What it practically looks like to live like the Kingdom is here now, even in a season you didn't choose and wouldn't have picked.

This episode isn't about pretending your unwanted story doesn't hurt. It's about recognizing that God is already meeting you in it, whether or not your circumstances ever change.

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Cancer. Divorce. Bankruptcy. Addiction. Chronic pain. Childhood trauma. A parent's divorce that was never your fault. We all carry pieces of our story we didn't choose, wouldn't have picked, and can't quite take back. This episode kicks off a brand new series called "Unwanted Stories," and today we're starting with the thing that quietly attaches itself to almost all of them, shame.

Kaley pulls from Brené Brown's definition of shame, the intensely painful feeling of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging, and puts it next to Scripture to build something more specific, a trauma informed, biblical understanding of shame that most teaching on the topic misses.

Some of what's covered:

• Why shame and guilt get treated like the same thing, and why they're not. Guilt says "I did something bad." Shame says "I am bad." One is about behavior, the other becomes an identity.
• Why guilt can actually be good. For Jesus followers, that's conviction, and it leads somewhere, toward repentance and restored relationship. Shame doesn't lead anywhere. It just lingers.
• The moment shame enters the story, Genesis 2 and 3, naked and not ashamed, then suddenly hiding, covering, afraid to be seen. What that shift actually tells us about what shame is doing to us now.
• Why so many unwanted stories, a diagnosis, a parent's divorce, a job loss, were never your fault, and yet shame shows up anyway. 
• The enemy doesn't need you to be guilty to make you feel disqualified.
• What Romans 5:1-5 says about the way out, not around the suffering, but through it, into endurance, character, and hope that doesn't put us to shame.

This episode is the foundation for the whole series. If you've got an unwanted story of your own, whatever it is, this is where we start.

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IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

To close out the "Healthy Church" series, Kaley isn't ending on the hard stuff — she's ending on the good. Because for every story of church hurt, there's also a story of a church that got it right. This episode is a collection of those.

Church is messy, complicated, human. That's been true throughout this whole series. But it's also still God's plan A for the gospel — and Kaley wants to make sure that doesn't get lost in the conversation about what's broken.

Some of what's covered:

• A childhood built inside the church — parents who met serving together, decades of Awana and VBS and mission trips, a youth pastor who happens to still listen to this podcast. What it looks like when a church becomes generational legacy, not just a Sunday habit.
• Sunday school teachers who washed feet, youth pastors who called out leadership before anyone else saw it, a senior pastor who handed a 15-year-old her first systematic theology book — small moments that shaped an entire calling.
• A church plant with no budget and less than 50 people, where ministry meant knowing every single kid by name instead of serving a crowd.
• Coming back to church after a breakup, ashamed and disoriented, and being met with one sentence that changed everything: "You don't owe anyone an explanation."
• What it looked like when a church community carried Kaley through a divorce — privacy protected, extra weight quietly taken on, people who showed up in the hardest and most ordinary ways.
• Visiting churches for the first time after leaving one — different denominations, different formats, none of them a perfect match doctrinally — and still meeting God in every single one.
• Why Hebrews 10:19-25 makes the case that personal faith was never meant to replace physical community — and what gets lost, slowly and quietly, when we try to go it alone.

This one's a reminder: the same church that can hurt you deeply is also capable of some of the most formative, healing moments of your life. Both are true.

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IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

Church hurt has come up throughout this whole series, but it deserves its own space — not to dwell there forever, but to actually sit with it before moving on. This episode is for the person who served, who led a small group, who tithed, who gave real years of their life to a church — and walked away carrying something heavy because of it.

Kaley pushes back on the popular phrase "the church didn't hurt you, people hurt you." A person may have delivered the blow, but they were operating inside a system — one that voted them in, ordained them, supported them. You can't fully separate the person from what they represent. That doesn't mean every hurt is the same, but it does mean the pain is real, and it deserves to be named as what it is.

Some of what's covered:

• What Ephesians 4:11-16 says a healthy body actually looks like — growing together, speaking truth in love, each part doing its job so the whole body builds itself up.
• Why validation has to come before perspective. People carrying church hurt aren't looking for attention — they're looking to be believed. Speaking truth in love means starting there, not skipping to "but here's the other side."
• The both/and of church hurt — that two things can be true at once. You may have played some part in how things unfolded, and still, what happened to you was real and wrong. The people who hurt you were still just people, not somehow more holy because of a title. And the church that hurt you likely also holds some of your best memories.
• Why healing happens in community, not alone — sometimes in a new church, a new group, a new mentor. Not because you have to leave where you were hurt, but because stepping into a healthier space can show you things you didn't know you were missing.

This episode isn't about staying angry at the church, and it isn't about pretending the hurt wasn't real. It's about holding both — and finding your way back into a body you're still needed in.

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IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

Maybe you've prayed and discerned your church isn't healthy. Or maybe it is, and it's just not your season there anymore: different needs, different growth, or God simply unsettling you toward something new. Whatever the reason, leaving a church doesn't have to come with drama, a confrontation, or a goodbye tour. You can leave quietly. You can leave well.

This episode isn't about exposing leadership or litigating who was right. That's not our job, it's God's. Instead, Kaley walks through Romans 12:14-18 as a practical framework for leaving a church at peace, even when you've been hurt.

Some of what's covered:

• The difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker, and why staying quiet to avoid conflict isn't actually the goal.
• Blessing the people who hurt you, even if that just means being careful with your words the next time someone asks how it's going over there.
• Rejoicing with the people staying behind, celebrating the good that still happens in a place you're choosing to leave, and making space to grieve with the people who are sad to see you go.
• Why humility means assuming you don't have the full picture — there's always a piece of the story you're missing.
• Laying down the need to be proven right, and why most of us won't get the vindication we're hoping for.
• Leaving in a way that's honorable to the church, to the people you led, and to your own story without silencing what you actually experienced.

This one's meant to be saved, not just listened to once. If you're in the middle of praying through a church transition, Kaley built this episode to be a reminder you can come back to when the big feelings hit.

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IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

Church hurt has come up again and again this year in DMs, in coaching calls, in the Q&A that just wrapped the last series. So instead of continuing to talk around it, this episode goes to the source and asks the actual question: what does a healthy church look like?

Kaley's life group reads Acts 2:42-47 together every single week for this reason. It's ground zero for the New Testament church: the blueprint written in the aftermath of Pentecost, when 3,000 people were suddenly added to a movement that had to figure out what to do next.

Every denomination interprets the specifics of this passage a little differently, but the outcomes of a healthy church should look the same no matter where you land.

This episode breaks down four markers from a single verse: devotion to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. And what each one actually looked like in the first century, versus what it should look like in a healthy church today.

• Teaching isn't just information: it's representing Christ to the body, guided by the Spirit, not just correct doctrine recited from a stage.
• Fellowship (koinonia) means actual friendship: shared life, shared goals, people who know each other beyond a Sunday nod.
• Breaking bread was ordinary meals, not just communion: a reminder that the things of God and everyday life were never meant to be separated.
• The prayers were rhythm and routine: not an afterthought squeezed in before a meeting, but a defining posture of the whole community.

It’s only one verse, but Kaley makes the case that if these four things are present, the rest tends to follow. It's not just a checklist for evaluating a church from the outside. It's a mirror for how each of us is stewarding the body we're already part of.

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IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

To close out the "Why Do I Feel Like I Don't Belong?" series, Kaley opens up her inbox, DMs, and conversations from her coaching group and life group to answer the real questions listeners have been asking about friendship, comparison, and church community.

Instead of easy answers, this episode walks through honest, scripture-backed responses to the tensions so many of us feel—being unseen in friendship, exhausted by comparison, and caught between conviction and community when it comes to church.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Real Friendship vs. Being Used: How to tell the difference between mutual, sacrificial friendship and one-sided relationships—plus honest questions to ask yourself if you're unsure (John 15:13).
• When You're Always the One Who Shows Up: What to do when you feel like the only one pursuing connection, and why reciprocation might not be the only measure of whether you're loved well (Galatians 6:9-10).
• Comparison, Social Media, and Losing Connection to Texts: Practical steps for protecting your peace from comparison culture, and how to rebuild real, in-person connection when most relationships live in a group chat (Romans 12:1, Matthew 6:33).
• Navigating an Imperfect Church Home: How to hold both love for your church community and honest tension over its limitations, plus the real markers of when it's time to stay, pray, or leave (Matthew 7:15-20).

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IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

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In this episode, Kaley continues the "Why Do I Feel Like I Don't Belong?" series by looking at belonging not just in Jesus' death, but across His whole life. From a scandal-marked birth to a wilderness temptation that targeted His identity as Son of God.

Instead of leaving belonging as something to chase, this episode shows how Jesus' sense of belonging was settled long before His ministry began, and what that means for how we live out our own identity in Christ.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Born an Outsider: Jesus entered the world through scandal, vulnerability, and rejection. Born to an unmarried mother, hunted by Herod, and dismissed in His own hometown. And what it means that God chose to start there.
• Finding Home at the Temple: The story of 12-year-old Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem (Luke 2:46-49), and how this moment reveals where His true sense of belonging was rooted, not in Nazareth, but in His Father's house.
• Beloved Before the Work Began: How Jesus' baptism (Matthew 3:16-17) settled His identity before a single miracle or sermon, and why God's declaration of "Beloved" over Him is what’s offered to us.
• Answering "Did God Really Say?": How Jesus responded to the enemy's attacks in the wilderness, and what it looks like to combat the lies we hear about God's love, presence, and faithfulness from a place of secure identity rather than self-doubt.

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Connect with Kaley:

www.kaleyhollingsworth.com

IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

YT: www.youtube.com/@kaleyhollingsworth

In this episode, Kaley tackles an experience that so many face: feeling completely alone even when surrounded by people. Whether it's sitting alone in a crowded room, not getting an invite, or navigating a new season, loneliness isn't just about physical isolation. It's a deeper, emotional reality.

Instead of quick fixes, this episode takes time to sit in the feels of loneliness and look to Scripture to see how Jesus handles it.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Isolation vs. Loneliness: Why young adults are reporting higher rates of loneliness, and how you can be surrounded by friends, workout buddies, or a church community and still feel alone.

• Making Space for Feelings: How Scripture (from Elijah's cry in 1 Kings 19 to the Psalms) gives us permission to acknowledge our loneliness rather than rush past it.

• Jesus Understands Your Loneliness: A look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when His closest friends fell asleep during His hour of distress (Matthew 26:36-42).

In this episode, Kaley continues our series Why Do I Feel Like I Don’t Belong? by tackling one of the most common statements shared in her research: "I don't fit in." From middle school outfit choices and post-worthy coffee runs to left-off lunch invites and excluded pickleball groups, we’ve all felt the sting of trying—and failing—to fit in.

But what if "fitting in" isn't actually what our hearts are searching for? This week, we explore the crucial difference between performing for human approval and walking in the settled security of true biblical belonging.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Exhaustion of Fitting In: Why trying to fit in is a moving target set by people, fueled by the fear of being left behind, and bound to leave us feeling broken or exhausted.
• Belonging as a Settled Position: How true belonging isn't earned through effort, clothing choices, or social invitations—it is established by your position in Christ (Ephesians 2:4-6).
• Chosen, Seated, and Adopted: Why God chose you before the foundation of the world to set you apart, adopt you into His family, and love you with the very same love He has for Jesus (Ephesians 1:3-6).
• 2 Reflection Questions to Reorient Your Heart: Practical, scripture-backed questions to help you identify whose approval you’re chasing and remove the obstacles keeping you from resting in your identity (Galatians 1:10, Romans 8:28-30).

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Connect with Kaley:

www.kaleyhollingsworth.com

IG: @kaley_hollingsworth⁠⁠

YT: www.youtube.com/@kaleyhollingsworth